Quotes about quit
page 9

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Learning, Summer, Training, Country

“There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Foreword to Radio Replies Vol. 1, (1938) page ix
Variant: There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church.

Hate, People

“And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Love, Time

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

Stupidity, Feeling

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Love, World

“The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting.”

Paulette Jiles book Enemy Women

Source: Enemy Women

Men, Hell, Fight

“Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. But that, along with plaguing subtle people with obtuse questions, is what being an ethnographer is like.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 29

People, Question, Science

“Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity, you will become a statistic.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Fight

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“Dude, the bush is ready. Why you still beating around it?”
“I’ve lived a long time, kid, and I’ve never heard anyone mutilate the English language quite like you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Time

“Francesca: It's still a bit cold yet.
Michael: Never stopped John and me.
Francesca: Yes, well, you're Scottish. Your blood circulates quite well half frozen.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Source: Unless You Become Like This Child

Life, Personality

“Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him.
Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Feeling, Time

“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Religion, Feeling, Freedom, Evil

“It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”

Joseph Conrad Lord Jim

Source: Lord Jim

Art, Understanding, Knowledge

“He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

“I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Reading

“Some people seem quite destitute a sense of humour.”

George Grossmith book The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody

People, Sense

“A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Personality

“[Jem] looked from Will to Tessa and raised his silvery eyebrows. "A miracle," he said. "You got him to speak."
"Just to shout at me, really," said Tessa. "Not quite loaves and fishes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fish

“At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.”

Haruki Murakami book The Strange Library

Source: The Strange Library

Time

“There is no dignity
quite so impressive,
and no independence
quite so important,
as living within your means.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

“Garion started shaving. "Try to keep away from your nose," said Hettar wryly. "A man looks quite strange without a nose.”

David Eddings book Castle of Wizardry

Source: Castle of Wizardry

“I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

“The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. I'm sixteen now, so you can imagine that's left me with quite a few days of major suckage.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Life, World, Imagination

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

Love, Soul

“She tried to smile sympathetically, but with her face it wasn't quite possible.”

Anthony Horowitz book Point Blanc

Source: Point Blank

Smile

“Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Love, Hate, Passion

“That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Destiny

Source: Ship of Destiny

Life, Learning

“Mercy," said my mother thoughtfully, "you never told me your werewolf neighbor was quite that hot.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

“Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Personality

“Even though he was here, she couldn't quite process it. She squeered her eyes shut before opening them again.
Yep, still there. Amazing.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“Something large and happy has unfolded in my chest, erupting in a smile that won’t quit. I can’t remember ever feeling so light-hearted. Or is my heart full? Or bursting? Not aching, that’s for sure.”

Fiona Wood (1958) British–Australian physician and plastic surgeon

Source: Six Impossible Things

Happiness, Smile, Feeling, Light

“I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

Chance

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Fools, Funny, Success

“when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Six - "In which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in".
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

People, Thinking

“Earrings are like orgasms. You can never have too many."
" I never thought about it quite that way."
Well, you're a man. " She gave his knee a friendly pat.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Daring to Dream

Way

“Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Children, Literature

“he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.”

Clare B. Dunkle book The Hollow Kingdom

Source: The Hollow Kingdom

Intelligence

“Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Life, God, Painting

“It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Future

“I went to the zoo once and saw this thing they call an anteater. That was quite enough for me.”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

“Barbarian that I am, I had eaten all of it. It had tasted quite nice too. Still, I took note of this fact and resigned myself to throw away half of a perfectly good cheese if it was set in front of me. Such is the price of civilization.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Love, Feeling

“One never quite stops believing, some doubt remains forever".”

Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons

Source: Of Love and Other Demons

“Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off…”

Jenna Blum book Het familieportret

Source: Those Who Save Us

Feeling, Parent

“I’m quite capable of walking,” she pointed out.
It is faster this way. Your legs are short.”
They are not!”

Christine Feehan book Dark Guardian

Source: Dark Guardian

Way

“Watching people is a bit of a hobby of mine. It's quite fascinating, really.”

Keigo Higashino The Devotion of Suspect X

Source: The Devotion of Suspect X

People

“You know how sometimes, your life is so perfect you’re afraid for the next moment, because it couldn’t possibly be quite as good? That’s what it felt like.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Life, Perfection

“I have been quite put out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Hate is all that keeps us alive when love is gone. You’re almost there. Not quite ready to let it go yet.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

Love, Hate

“I sat there for three hours and did not feel the time or the boredom of our talk and its foolish disconnection. As long as I could hear his voice, I was quite lost, quite blind, quite outside my own self.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Feeling, Time

“Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel

Spring, Change, Time, Season

“You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

“Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Love, World

“He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn’t quite reach the honey.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“Maybe warlocks only liked other warlocks. Though Magnus did seem to like Alec quite a lot.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Life, People, Problem, Personality

“Damned mating heat. Lawe is threatening to join a monastery and Rule's threatening to quit. Why don't you two try to show the younger guys it can be fun instead of taking a note out of everyone else's books and letting it drive you insane?
-Jonas”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Mercury's War

Books, Law, Guy

“You've turned into quite a bossy little thing," Myrnin said. "I think I might like it.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Thinking

“I thought if I quit looking around for you, I would forget you. I thought if I avoided you, I could get you out of my head. But it didn’t work.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: See Jane Score

Forgetting

“A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Lie

“The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite moon. The rest is hiding just out of view, but there’s only one moon, so we follow it in the sky. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides.”

Alice Sebold book The Almost Moon

Source: The Almost Moon

Time

“I'm not sure you're quite sensible of the honor I'm doing you," Jace said. "you'll be the first mundane who has ever been inside the Institute.""Probably the smell keeps the rest of them away.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.”

Maureen Johnson book 13 Little Blue Envelopes

Source: 13 Little Blue Envelopes

“I do like the world quite a lot.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

World

“Well that's the problem with paradise- nothing attracts a serpent quite like it.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Problem

“Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Forgiveness, Revenge

“A person walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost-but not quite-unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones.”

Anita Shreve (1946–2018) American writer

Source: Eden Close

Life, Personality

“If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.”

Josephine Tey (1896–1952) Scottish author, mystery writer

Thinking

“Well, I'm a Lovelace. My family quit Shadowhunting due to laziness in the 1700s.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Family

“For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“The truth hit him. Jason wasn't quite Roman anymore. His time at Camp Half-Blood had changed him. Reyna had recognized that. Apparently, so did the undead legionnaires. If Jason no longer gave off the right sort of vibe, or aura of a Roman leader…”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Truth, Change, Time

“When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.”

Robert Rodriguez (1968) American film director and producer

Source: Rebel Without a Crew, or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player

Back To Work

“When you learn to read you will be born again… and you will never be quite so alone again.”

Rumer Godden (1907–1998) English writer

Learning, Reading

“I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.”

Quentin Blake (1932) English cartoonist, illustrator and children's writer

Source: Words and Pictures

Waiting

“We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit… You must realize that we've found the main nerve."

I know," he said. "That's what gives me the Fear.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Fear, Dreams

“It's actually quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years, standing to be counted with the rest of you. Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here, and particulary of course for Syd”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

LIVE 8, Hyde Park, London, July 2005
Music

Guy

“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.”
“Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.”
“To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”
“Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.”
“Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered.
“But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured.
“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.
“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
“Why can’t we all move forward together?”
“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.”
“Who leads?”
“The men who must … driven men, compelled men.”
“Freak men.”
“You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”
“Thank you very much.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

“My pleasure, sir.”
Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 16 (p. 251).

Life, Men, Pleasure, Stupidity

“This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.
Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.
According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

Hope, Intelligence, Problem, Decision

“When there is a discrepancy between an individual's actual social identity and his virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 56

“But the Harp called out quite loud: Master! Master!”

Joseph Jacobs book English Fairy Tales

English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, Jack and the Beanstalk

“Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before — consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

“Ludwig also provides a brief, quite brilliant exposition and critique of the concept of an "authentic" self, noting that it is rooted in a male Victorian ethos and that it has been overshadowed by the more contemporary American notion of self-invention. Ludwig's beautifully written and intellectually provocative book is one of those rare works that offer fresh, profound insights, moving the reader to think probingly about his or her own life and self.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

Kirkus Reviews on How Do We Know Who We Are?: A Biography of the Self (1997)

Life, Books, Thinking

“A wrongness persisted, a sense of aberration, some factor not quite right, the feeling of a corner. But Boone could not pin it down; there seemed no way to reach it.”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

Way, Feeling, Sense

“K. Barton Osborn, who served in a covert program of intelligence in Vietnam, not only testified to a wide variety of forms of torture used by U. S. and Saigon personnel, but also made the startling claim that “I never knew an individual to be detained as a VC suspect who ever lived through an interrogation in a year and a half, and that included quite a number of individuals.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. 325-326.

Intelligence

“By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases... The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.

Law, Understanding, Question, Decision

“It's really quite simple. Mr. Isinglass robbed my father, destroyed my mother, exiled my brothers, and ruined me. If I catch him asleep I'll kill him. I do hope you like this pudding. I had to ride quite a way to find the plums.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

Anything For Billy (1988).

Hope, Way

“We have a God-given commission, but it is not a commission to be self-righteous know-it-alls- quite the contrary. Our work in God's world begins with the acknowledgment that we are not God, and that our most bitter rivals are made in God's image.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 166
Faith and Politics (2006)

God, World

“Quite undeservedly, the ether has acquired a bad name.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Fantastic realities: 49 mind journeys and a trip to Stockholm, Singapore: World Scientific, 2006, p. 293, and "The Persistence of Ether": Physics Today, Vol. 52, Issue 1, pp. 11–13 (January 1999) http://xserver2.lns.mit.edu/%7Ecsuggs/physics_today/phystoday/Ether.pdf

“When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Communication, Understanding

“He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 34

Chance

“Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? The founders of political science did not think so. "I put for a general inclination of mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death," declared Thomas Hobbes. Because of this innate lust for power, Hobbes thought that life before (or after) the state was a "war of every man against every man"—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Was Hobbes right? Do humans have an unquenchable desire for power that, in the absence of a strong ruler, inevitably leads to a war of all against all? To judge from surviving examples of bands and villages, for the greater part of prehistory our kind got along quite well without so much as a paramount chief, let alone the all-powerful English leviathan King and Mortal God, whom Hobbes believed was needed for maintaining law and order among his fractious countrymen.”

Marvin Harris (1927–2001) American anthropologist

Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1989)

Life, Death, God, War

“There were five issues involved in Bharat Yatra—scarcity of proper food and drinking water, primary education, basic health amenities and fifth - social harmony. I had planned in my mind that we would work in 350 backward districts of the country. In order to perform this task I had decided to quit the post of the President of the Janata Party. But I could not do this. After the Yatra I became trapped in the politics of o”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

Source: Prem Singh Chandra Shekhar’s Unforgettable Resistance to Globalisation http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article219.html, Mainstream Weekly, 2006

Health, Education, Food, Drink

“There is a revealing sardonic comment by Leopold Godowsky on a well-known statement of Paderewski, who once boasted, "When I don't practice for one day, my fingers know it; for two days, and my friends know it; for three days and the whole world knows it." Godowsky added: "On the fourth day, the critics hear about it." In any case, poets and novelists are generally better reporters of the general state of musical opinion than music journalists, who most often have an ax to grind, or, quite reasonably and justifiably, a more limited set of prejudices to broadcast.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

World, Music

“Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 307 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=325&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-11981 from Emma Darwin (wife) to N.A. Mengden (8 April 1879) <br class="br">The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

God, Personality

“Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

"The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile; quoted in Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present (2004) by Stanislao G. Pugliese, p. 89
1930s

Life, Death, War, People

Quotes about quit page 9

Quotes about quit
page 9